LRT builder nets unflattering hat trick after city confirms RTG will miss third handover deadline
Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: March 5, 2019
The Rideau Transit Group can’t finish the $2.1-billion Confederation Line LRT system by a March 31 deadline, while city council needs to decide Wednesday if it wants to spend $4.6 billion more to expand the O-Train network.
RTG says it can deliver Stage 1 of the LRT system sometime in the second quarter of the year, which means by the end of June.
“OC Transpo is ready. The public is ready,” John Manconi, the city’s transportation general manager, told reporters Tuesday after a finance and economic development committee meeting.
“Every person I talk to can’t wait for the system. You’ve all told me that individually, and yeah, it’s been delayed. But really complicated things that are worth it need good oversight, which we’ve done, and safety and reliability has been the cornerstone of this and that’s what we continue to do.”
Manconi said he learned last Friday that RTG would miss this month’s deadline, the third time the builder hasn’t been able to complete the 12.5-kilometre LRT line by a promised handover date. The previous deadlines were May 24, 2018 and Nov. 2, 2018.
The LRT contract gives RTG 60 days to propose a new handover date, but the company says it won’t need the full 60 days to identify when the city will get the keys.
It was only on Feb. 12 that Peter Lauch, the chief executive of RTG, told councillors at a finance committee meeting that the company would deliver the LRT system by March 31. City hall bosses didn’t buy it.
Lauch, who appeared again at the finance committee meeting on Tuesday, said the fleet availability and testing status at the end of February compelled him to notify the city that a March 31 handover wasn’t going to happen.
The city will penalize RTG another $1 million for missing this deadline, just like it did for missing the November 2018 deadline. The penalty didn’t apply to the May 2018 deadline.
Councillors went digging for specifics of the holdup, knowing that 24 hours later they would be asked to approve rail extensions across Ottawa as part of the Stage 2 project. The expanded LRT system will also use the same Alstom Citadis Spirit trains engineered for Stage 1.
Council’s decision on Wednesday is about awarding contracts to extend LRT to Trim Road, Algonquin College and Moodie Drive, and extend the Trillium Line to Limebank Road and the Ottawa International Airport. Council is scheduled to vote on awarding the Confederation Line expansion contract to Kiewit and Vinci and the Trillium Line expansion contract to SNC-Lavalin.
Six councillors — Rick Chiarelli, Diane Deans, Jeff Leiper, Catherine McKenney, Shawn Menard and Carol Anne Meehan — want council to delay the vote until March 27 so politicians fully understand the implications of the Stage 2 program.
As for Stage 1, Manconi seemed confident that RTG could get the job done on by the end of June.
Testing and commissioning of the trains and the paperwork on safety certification are the major things standing in the way of the city’s receiving the LRT system.
The 13 stations are nearing completion, with all but Tunney’s Pasture, Parliament, Rideau and St. Laurent stations ready for occupancy.
All 34 LRT vehicles have been built and are available for testing. Twenty-four of the Thales on-board control computers have been certified. So far, as many as 15 vehicles have been tested on the tracks at once, but the city wants to see the system stress-tested with at least 20 running at the same time.
A major test using 15 coupled trains — which are two vehicles joined together, and four other vehicles on standby — needs to be perfect before the city takes possession of the LRT line, since that’s the service plan for the busiest times in the transit system.
Train operations in winter conditions consumed much of the committee meeting.
The trains have been cold-weather tested at the National Research Council, and although Manconi noted the Citadis parent model is used around the world, including in cold-weather climates, he said those cities might not have comparable snowfall to Ottawa.
When it comes to snowfall, it’s not about the trains — it’s about keeping the tracks clear, he said.
RTG’s maintenance arm, Rideau Transit Maintenance, which has a 30-year LRT maintenance contract with the city, is tweaking its winter procedures in response to what the company learned about operations over the winter. The company has acquired a “melter” machine to help rid the rails of snow and ice. In heavy snowfalls, Transpo will run trains overnight to keep the tracks clear.
With a delivery date projected in the April-June window, RTG might not get to a necessary 12-consecutive-day test period of the full fleet during the most wintry conditions of the year.
Mayor Jim Watson said he believes there has been lots of time to test the rail system in an Ottawa winter and, he noted, there’s still all of March.
“I have every confidence that the systems are going to be fully tested out,” Watson said. “We won’t sign off or accept a substandard or unsafe product from RTG.”
RTG is likely burning through borrowed money since the company hasn’t received a dime from the City of Ottawa since February 2018. The city halted the “milestone” payments to RTG because there have been no milestones for which to compensate the builder.
There was no information during the meeting about the financial state of RTG.
Lauch said after the meeting he didn’t have time to answer questions from reporters.
The city has frozen transit fares until July 1 because the LRT system isn’t ready yet. Watson said he would be open to continuing the freeze until the LRT system opens, but the decision is up to council.
The mayor couldn’t say when transit customers would be riding the trains.
“I’ve given up predicting what date it’s exactly going to fall to,” Watson said.
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